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February 05, 2008

NO WINNER AT THE WILLESDEN HERALD

The 2008 Short Story Competition - boasting a $5,000 prize, no entry fee, and Zadie Smith as a judge - has opted not to award a prize this year, as Smith explains at the Willesden Herald blog.

Now I would like to lose the collective pronoun and speak personally for a moment. I am very proud to be patron of this prize. I think there are few prizes of this size that would have the integrity not to award a prize when there is not sufficient cause to do so. Most literary prizes are only nominally about literature, they are really about brand consolidation – for beer companies, phone companies, coffee companies even frozen food companies. The little Willesden Herald Prize is only about good writing, and it turns out that a prize faithfully recognizing this imperative must also face the fact that good writing is actually very rare. For let us be honest again: it is sometimes too easy, and too tempting, to blame everything that we hate in contemporary writing on the bookstores, on the corporate publishers, on incompetent editors and corrupt PR departments – and God knows, they all have their part to play. But we also have our part to play. We also have to work out how to write better and read better. We have to really scour this internet to find the writing we love, and then we have to be able to recognize its quality. We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.

Posted by TEV at 10:30 AM in Prizes, Prizes and More Prizes |

Comments

Jim H.

Drat! And I missed the deadline by a couple of days... Seriously, when I heard about the contest I thought about entering a story of mine ("Assisted Living") but realized I couldn't get it across the pond in time to meet the deadline.

Is that irony? Or just pathetic?

Again, with a 5,000 pound prize, why didn't any number of heavyweights throw something in the mix? The fact is this is really unbelievable. Do you think there's more to the story than they are saying?

Good luck with the book...

Posted by: Jim H. | February 05, 2008 at 10:37 AM

Pete

Damn, my story "Mahalia" gets dissed again, for about the fortieth time. At least they didn't gouge me for an entry fee.

Posted by: Pete | February 05, 2008 at 12:27 PM

Steven Augustine

I imagine for anyone who bothered to submit (love that word), miss Smith's pronouncement felt even worse than not winning. Last time I read of such a thing happening, VS Naipaul had done it to a bunch of African schoolkids hoping for a poetry ribbon, and even scowly Naipaul handed out a "Third Place" on that occasion.

Lucky Zadie that she's no longer forced to submit. Larf.

Posted by: Steven Augustine | February 05, 2008 at 01:07 PM

grackyfrogg

i also missed the deadline for this one. i thought entries had to be postmarked by december 15, not received by that date. i was about to send in my story on the 15th when someone pointed out my mistake--and therefore, my too-lateness. *sigh* what different tune might ms smith be singing, of only...!

seriously though, i can't help thinking she is being unnecessarily harsh (not in her sound perhaps but certainly in her sense). maybe instead of waxing rhapsodically vague about how rare good writing is, she could give some clearer pointers about what type(s) of stories she, as judge, likes to read. what subjects, what themes, etc. because in the end, i suspect that that is really at the heart of the fact that no one won this prize.

Posted by: grackyfrogg | February 05, 2008 at 02:11 PM

JK

Really, this sucked.

Posted by: JK | February 05, 2008 at 08:48 PM

Mark R

I don't know if anyone pointed this out on the Herald's website (there are about 4,000 comments), but Ms Smith writes: "Our sole criteria is quality." If even the esteemed judge is capable of illiterate moments, what hope is there for the rest of us? (And, no, I did not enter the competition).

Posted by: Mark R | February 06, 2008 at 04:37 AM

MJD

I find the quality of Ms. Smith's work to be highly overrated, her career based on exactly the type of "branding" hype she fears, and this "no prize!" move to be yet another vehicle for her to gain notoriety in name. She's in the epitome of what is "wrong" with literature - arrogant, self-aggrandizing, more pretty flash than substance, and big dollar book deals valued above reading or writing.

And no, did not submit as I am not a short story writer.

Posted by: MJD | February 06, 2008 at 09:38 AM

Ossian

It might have seemed easier to just give the ($10k by the way) prize to somebody. But if you don't think one of the stories in front of you is a winner, it is better to bite the bullet and say, "Sorry, there is no winner this year." In the circumstances, any other action would have lead into the realms of the phoney, from which few return.

Posted by: Ossian | February 06, 2008 at 10:15 AM

Arturo Bandini

O, Zadie Smith...literary punk-priestess of north London, how you smite us!

Posted by: Arturo Bandini | February 06, 2008 at 05:17 PM

Steven Augustine

There's more to this story than first meets the eye. The man who writes, of the Willesden prize, "I am the chairman of the judges, it's my competition," got involved in a minor flame war with a group of GU commenters who, largely, took exception to (what I called) Zadie Smith's "overweeningly faux-benign speech". Whichever side of the controversy you fall on, it's a fascinating removal of the facade of gravitas that usually accompanies a high-profile fiction prize:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/02/when_should_a_books_jury_remai.html

The chairman of the prize, posting as "Zozimus" (identity confirmed) first appears about a third of the way through the thread.

Posted by: Steven Augustine | February 08, 2008 at 02:20 PM

Sarah

The discourtesy and hauteur of Smith's explanation and Zozimus's GU blog posts was what struck me initially (and I may or may not have a horse in this race; I submitted a story but late enough that it may have missed the deadline, and since I'm in the States they didn't offer a way to confirm my story's receipt).

But beyond its rudeness, it's a deeply weird, overheated rant. Of the numerous literary competitions I have entered (and been rejected by), not one has shown the concern for their "brand" that Smith does here, and all at least thanked their entrants for their interest. Maybe this shows my ignorance, but I can't think of a single literary contest sponsored by, let alone rebounding to the glory of, a beer or frozen food company.

I think the Willesden Herald was offering an excessive prize. How many single stories (if we're going to think this way) "deserve" that amount of money? But if Smith and Co. felt the problem was a lack of qualified entrants, they don't do much with this manifesto to remedy it.

Posted by: Sarah | February 12, 2008 at 11:42 AM

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